My stepmother was sitting at the entrance to the house, a ball of fat in her lap. Everyone who passed by shouted things at her, but she kept eating, never glancing at them. But as soon as they had passed, she shook her finger at them. The pregnant women finished their dance, and all the men lined up to race. They ran with their eyes bulging, arms in front of them, chests forward. They gave the appearance of being disjointed. Their breath preceded them, and they followed it. Two very old men had already prepared the hollow tree trunk with the short sticks. All of the sticks had sharp pointed tips, except one, which ended in a fork. The man who drew the forked stick was forced to swim under the village. The faceless men, the noseless, the earless, all of them shut themselves in the stables so as not to dishearten the others. The one who drew the forked stick needed to be brave, brave as the sun. The hollow tree trunk with the sticks inside was painted pink, inside and out. It was repainted every year, just like the houses. The men and older boys had to run past the trunk and seize a stick. When a sharp stick was drawn, everyone was silent. When the forked stick was drawn, everyone burst out laughing and the children jumped up and down.
A boy who was not much older than me drew the stick. His face was like others’, but his nose was straighter, his cheeks more delicate. When he glimpsed the tip of the stick, he turned pale with the pallor of fear, and everyone knew — even before seeing it — that he had chosen the forked stick. Always, always, the one who drew the forked stick turned pale.
The blacksmith and a group of men accompanied the boy to the upper edge of the village, where the water from the river thrust itself downward, toward darkness. The boy stripped, and they gave him a drink; while he drank, his eyes wandered from one man to the other. He took too long to dive into the water, and the men had to throw him in, alone and naked. I had gone to watch, my stepmother beside me, and when the boy plunged into the water, she pulled a piece of string from her pocket and began swinging it. A man noticed us, and he struck me on the chest with his fist, knocking me to the ground. All of the men raced to the lower edge of the village to watch for the boy. In the Plaça, three women were pounding and mixing together wisteria blossoms and bees in a wooden mortar: this was the ointment to dress the boy’s wounds, re-sheathing the skin over his blood. Senyor observed it all from his towering window. He was waiting for the boy to emerge and announce that the village would soon be swept away by the river. He could see when a man entered the water and when he emerged. If the man was unconscious when he reappeared, the villagers would fish him out and carry him to the riverbank. As soon as the man had left the water, Senyor would close his window.
My chest hurt, and I headed for home. My stepmother followed me. We sat on the step in front of the house. I looked at her and she laughed, and all the while the water beneath the village was thrashing the boy against the rocks, mutilating him.
X
When they pulled the boy from the river, he was dead; they returned him to the river. Those who died in the water were returned to the water. The river carried them away and nothing was ever known of them again. But at night, at the spot where the bodies were thrown into the water, a shadow could be seen. Not every night. Not today or tomorrow, but on certain nights a shadow trembled. They said the shadow of the dead returned to the place where the man was born. They said that to die was to merge with the shadow. That summer, the shadow of the boy was clearly distinguishable. It was unmistakably him because he had been separated from one of his arms, and the shadow had but one arm. Struggling against the current, the shadow — which was only will, not body or voice — attempted to slip beneath the village. And as the shadow struggled, the prisoner neighed.
Only one prisoner remained in the village. Long ago, there had been another, and he had lived, they said, twice as long as most people did. The prisoners were thieves: the village only punished thieves, and they punished them by taking away their humanity. The blacksmith built the prisoner’s cage. He made it small, just large enough for a person to sit in, but not lie down. The first prisoner had had a wooden cage; everyone recalled how he passed the time biting his nails until blood spurted from them. Then he would begin to sob. The wooden cage rotted before the prisoner had ceased to be a person, and they were forced to build a new one. The iron one, they said, would last a lifetime. In winter, the villagers placed logs around the cage, so the prisoner would not be cold. Everyone loved the prisoner. They took him food and water every day. He was kept below the wash area, and when the women gathered there, the mad ones would call out, neigh, neigh for us. Sometimes, when the prisoner was alone, he would attempt to neigh, but instead of a neigh, a kind of yowl would emerge, a strange voice. On Sundays, many villagers went with their children to see the prisoner. They would toss him morsels of meat, close to the bars, and he had to catch the scraps with his mouth. If he couldn’t catch them, he had to pick them up from the ground with his teeth, like a horse eating grass. When no more meat could fit inside him, he would close his mouth and eyes, shutting the villagers out, and on the following day he would be punished. If it was summer the blacksmith would smear honey on him, and soon the prisoner became a fury of bees. Before honey could be smeared over his body, he would be seated in a bucket, his ankles and wrists tied with heavy rope to the bars of the cage.
The prisoner was so thin you could count his ribs, and his eyes had red streaks like my mother’s. No one knew what he had stolen, but they all agreed that he had stolen. If it was winter, instead of smearing him with honey, they would force him to drink unfiltered water from Font de la Jonquilla. Worms would emerge through his skin, and as soon as they did, they died, because they could not live without water. The prisoner was wasted after that, drained of strength. He would recover very slowly and open his eyes, without looking. I saw him once, hands and ankles tied, his head leaning motionless against his shoulder, a swollen vein in his neck.
That summer as the shadow struggled, the prisoner neighed and the horses responded. The following day, the whole village gathered to watch the blacksmith remove the cage. They lifted it in the air and abandoned it on Senyor’s mountain. When the prisoner realized he was no longer surrounded by iron bars, he began to neigh with all his remaining force, spreading his arms and legs wide. He remained in that position, as if still tied. He is no longer a person, the blacksmith announced. The skin on his wrists and ankles had lighter-colored stripes, as if the sun had been unable to penetrate the rope that sometimes bound him. Two men stood him on his feet, and when they let go of him, he fell to the ground, again spreading his arms and legs. The blacksmith turned to face the group and announced once more that the prisoner was no longer human, but he would live longer than they would.